It almost reads like a dating advert. But they are five words that describe thousands (maybe even millions) of people around the world who are seeking a brighter future in a new country. Why? They aren’t wanting to leave their nation because they are tired of the climate or because they just feel like a change. No. They are desperate to leave so they can survive to live to an old age but also so they don’t have to live in fear. So desperate they are willing to risk their lives to cross lands and oceans in the hope that there is a promised land somewhere in the world where they can live and call home.
“The one thing you hold against me is the one thing I can’t change” – excerpt from Her Long Goodbye. This quote rings so true when talking about refugees/asylum seekers. No one can chose where they are born yet that is held against them when they are seeking a brighter future in another country. I understand that there needs to be some controls over refugee numbers. But there needs to be compassion wrapped around those controls, both in how they are enforced but also how they are decided. As I write this thousands are making their way through Hungary and Austria towards Germany. It could have been you or I could if we had been born in Syria. We did not choose where we were born.
With the decisions that are to be made perhaps there is no right or wrong, but instead maybe there is just really hard decisions. We are so quick to judge the decision-makers and to say what we would have done. But would you want to hold the lives and futures of thousands, possibly millions, in your hands?
Today I walked along New Brighton beach and wept as I looked out to sea thinking of the perilous voyages being made across the Aegean and Mediterranean seas. I recall the photo posted around the world yesterday of the three year old Syrian boy whose body was washed ashore following the sinking of the boat he and his family were on. His father’s anger at himself for feeling as though he failed his son and the grief that perhaps he will never shake. But it wasn’t him that failed his son. He was trying to give his son a future. Perhaps it was the rest of the world that failed his son.
I will never forget that image of that boy and I hope you don’t either. Sometimes when we’re physically removed from situations like these we need to be shocked into facing the reality of it. Don’t be overwhelmed and paralysed by the enormity of the problem for we only fail when we don’t act.
“The one thing you hold against me is the one thing I can’t change” – excerpt from Her Long Goodbye. This quote rings so true when talking about refugees/asylum seekers. No one can chose where they are born yet that is held against them when they are seeking a brighter future in another country. I understand that there needs to be some controls over refugee numbers. But there needs to be compassion wrapped around those controls, both in how they are enforced but also how they are decided. As I write this thousands are making their way through Hungary and Austria towards Germany. It could have been you or I could if we had been born in Syria. We did not choose where we were born.
With the decisions that are to be made perhaps there is no right or wrong, but instead maybe there is just really hard decisions. We are so quick to judge the decision-makers and to say what we would have done. But would you want to hold the lives and futures of thousands, possibly millions, in your hands?
Today I walked along New Brighton beach and wept as I looked out to sea thinking of the perilous voyages being made across the Aegean and Mediterranean seas. I recall the photo posted around the world yesterday of the three year old Syrian boy whose body was washed ashore following the sinking of the boat he and his family were on. His father’s anger at himself for feeling as though he failed his son and the grief that perhaps he will never shake. But it wasn’t him that failed his son. He was trying to give his son a future. Perhaps it was the rest of the world that failed his son.
I will never forget that image of that boy and I hope you don’t either. Sometimes when we’re physically removed from situations like these we need to be shocked into facing the reality of it. Don’t be overwhelmed and paralysed by the enormity of the problem for we only fail when we don’t act.